Having had very recent experience with announcing a free celebratory range of content, Hulu were this week in a good position to reveal a much more ambitious offering than the 24 Akira Kuwosawa-directed movies, and will be considered their biggest temporary streaming giveaway yet, at least in the eyes of the TV fan group known as ‘Trekkies’.

Announced as a means of celebrating the 82nd birthday of actor William Shatner (‘Captain Kirk’), Hulu have declared that until the end of March, all 693 episodes of the historic sci-fi show Star Trek will be made available free-to-view without needing an account or subscription to ad-free platform Hulu Plus.

The offer covers all live-action shows run under the franchise’s name, including Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, and Star Trek: Voyager. Viewers of the series will also be able to vote on their favorite episode (which will be featured on the home page), along with a fan contest to find the most popular Star Trek character in a knockout tournament format.

Hulu announced the move in a blog post on the day the promotion began (22 March), writing at the time: “Today is William Shatner’s birthday, and Hulu is making every episode from every Star Trek series available to watch for free until the end of the month. Resistance is futile. Almost as futile as controlling a population of tribbles.

We’re polling folks to find out which episode they’d like featured on the home page this weekend, and later today, iconic characters will face off in March Madness-style brackets, with Trek fans voting for their favorites. Things will get heated. Friends may turn on each other. But hopefully it won’t come to that. Check out every Star Trek episode here. And of course, (you know we’ve gotta say it): Live long and prosper.”

Launching through to the end of March (now 1 week away), it is now an impossible task for even the most hardcore and lifeless ‘Star Trek nerd’ to watch almost 100 episodes per day, so it looks as though they will have to choose wisely if they want to have a sci-fi marathon of their favorite moments…